DPT vaccine

The moderator apologises for a serious error. I uploaded an older version of this blog which did not include all information. This has now been fixed and again, I apologise to both Epiphany who wrote this blog post and to our readers for not having the correct information here from the word go.MD

I came across a blog the other day called ”Which button would you click?” In it is the typical pro-vaccine scenario of having to choose between pushing a button that kills 1 out of 1,000 children (the supposed rates of death by disease) while the other button kills 1 out of 1,000,000 children (the supposed rates of death by vaccine reactions). At the end of the scenario, the question is posed “which one would you click?”

The blogger’s response is “it’s a no brainer”, and in some ways, he is correct. It does take absolutely no brain power to follow the advice of most mainstream medical and scientific professionals, but it does take brain power to actually look at the historical data on mortality rates of supposed vaccine preventable diseases yourself and see whether vaccines really do save lives.

So let’s look at the first button, if we do not vaccinate will 1 out 1,000 children die?

“Experience of the last two centuries indicates that infectious deaths fell to a small fraction of their earlier level without medical intervention, and suggests that had none been available they would have continued to decline, if not so rapidly in some diseases.”

Professor Thomas McKeown in “The Role of Medicine”

If we look at the mortality rates in Australia pre-vaccine for most childhood diseases, you will see that there was already a 90-99% decline before most vaccines were introduced and the same decline in diseases like Typhoid and Scarlet Fever for which no vaccine was ever used in Australia. (please note: the following graphs are taken from the e=book, Fooling Ourselves on the Fundamental Value of Vaccines by Greg Beattie)

How is that possible you ask, if vaccines did not save us from disease what else could it possibly be?

“In the now developed countries, mortality due to tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, typhoid fever, diarrhoeal diseases and many other infections began to fall long before the responsible microbial agents had been identified and before specific measures of control or treatment were known. This decline – much greater than anything achieved since through the use of vaccination and antimicrobial drugs – paralleled the improvement in general living conditions. Microbes and the diseases caused by them prosper, therefore, only in environmental conditions favourable to them.”

Dr Moises Behar said in his report to the World Health.

I have actually asked a vaccine advocate in an online debate before, “What evidence do you have to show what percentage of lives saved historically comes from vaccines, and what percentage of lives saved are from improved living conditions?”. Funnily enough, they had no answer.

Over and over again, we are told that vaccines save lives and unvaccinated people are putting everyone’s lives at risk, but where is the evidence of this? Now when I say evidence, I don’t mean estimated lives saved based on estimates of vaccine coverage, efficacy, and the population, I mean actual numbers of real people who have been saved from death because of being vaccinated. The answer – is that there is no evidence, you cannot actually prove that vaccines save lives. You can only prove that it causes the body to produce antibodies to the vaccine virus and bacterial particles, so if vaccines are not proven to save lives, then is it really a “no brainer” to push that second button?

Now let’s look at the second button, do only 1 out 1,000,000 children die from adverse vaccine reactions?

“ The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) states, “VAERS data are limited by underreporting and unknown sensitivity of the reporting system, making it difficult to compare adverse event rates following vaccination reported to VAERS with those from complications following natural disease”

“ Since follow-up is not conducted, it may be argued that some reports may not be attributed to or associated with vaccination and therefore the true rate of adverse events is essentially unknown. Nevertheless, adverse reactions reported in VAERS have typically been shown to be only 5% or 10% of the true rates.”

So if the true rate of adverse events is essentially unknown, how can doctors in all honesty say that the rate is 1 in 1,000,000? Maybe it is just me, but I would think having a true rate of adverse reactions would be a priority, especially when parents are being pushed harder and harder to vaccinate their children and themselves everyday by the government, medical and scientific organisations and the media.

To further demonstrate the supposed catastrophic results that can occur when vaccination rates decline, this blog includes a graph purporting to show that pertussis rates and deaths went up in Japan when the vaccination coverage declined. What this graph does not include though is that the original reasons for stopping the use of this vaccine was concerns due to 37 infant deaths linked with the DTP vaccine itself! The fact is, pertussis is a cyclical disease that tends to peak every 2 to 5 years. One very interesting thing to come from this period of time is that when Japan started vaccinating again, they changed the age of vaccination to 2 years old. As a result, something startling happened! Japan jumped from 17th to first place for lowest infant mortality in the world!

This was also seen in England in 1975, when the media reported a link between brain damage and vaccination. Parents stopped vaccinating and the overall infant mortality rate plummeted, but when vaccination rates started increasing again, MacFarlane in 1982 noted;

“The postneonatal mortality fell markedly in 1976, the year in which a sharp decline in perinatal mortality rate began. Between 1976 and 1979, however, neither the late nor the postneonatal mortality rates fell any further. Indeed, the postneonatal mortality rate increased slightly among babies born in 1977″.

A much more telling pertussis graph to include would have to be the one for the whooping cough epidemic here in Australia. It started with over 4,000 cases in 2007; 14,000 cases in 2008; 29,000 cases in 2009; 34,000 cases in 2010; and 38,000 cases in 2011. So obviously, going on the previous graph, there must be low vaccination rates, right? No wait…the vaccination coverage rates for infants under two is 94.9% and the under 5yr rate is 90.7%. It certainly doesn’t seem like high vaccination rates equal, less whooping cough now does it? ( http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/provider/patients/acir/statistics.jsp#N1002D)

In Conclusion:

We have button number 1 where there is no concrete evidence that vaccines have saved lives. Instead, we are left with fears based on historical rates of disease incidence and death. We don’t even have any evidence that, were we to stop vaccinating, diseases would return to the rates we had before living conditions were improved, let alone to seeing 1 in 1,000 die.

With button number 2, the true rates of adverse reactions are essentially unknown. At the very best, a maximum of between 1 and 10% of reactions are reported. (Personal communication with Dr John McEwen, formerly of ADRAC) So the 1 in 1,000,000 figure for children dying from vaccine reactions is, once again, just a guess.

So where does this leave us?

Where all concerned parents should be: looking at ALL the information available, weighing the pros and cons and hoping that we make the best possible choice for our families. Whatever that choice may be, it should always be in the hands of the person or persons taking the risk.

NOTE: We are NOT Australian Skeptics (with a ‘k’). Our name is spelt with a ‘c’. Not only is our spelling different, but so too are our objectives, methods, activities, and focus. Everything, really. The other lot appear to be largely concerned with attacking things they don’t understand; bullying minorities; and further entrenching the status quo.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, click here to visit their website.

Otherwise, stick around. Our website is dedicated to introducing doubt, stimulating curiosity, furthering enquiry, and fostering good sense. You will see references in this blog to the other lot, but rest assured that there is no connection whatsoever between us!